Edward Kruger: The Intersection of Compassion and Strategy in Business Growth

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My name is Matt, and I will be talking to Edward Kruger about strategic thinking, leadership development, and learning resources.

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Yeah, Edward, I'm really happy to have you here today.

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And as many listeners know, I don't like the intros and the pitches.

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And I just want to go directly to the question and talk about the meaty, gritty details.

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Let's go.

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The work of engineering leaders.

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Yeah.

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So, Eduard, because you have really interesting background, you coming from South Africa, you

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are pretty experienced and pretty well known tech entrepreneur and director.

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And you moved to Canada and you transitioned in a scene there.

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And, like, could you tell me the story and to the listeners, because this is not the typical kind of, you know.

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Yeah. Transition. Yeah. So from a very young age, I kind of knew that I wanted to be in software.

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You know, I think I started, you know, very young at six years old, you know, creating my first computer program.

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And I got this opportunity as a young engineer.

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You know, I was working very hard, and I was this, you know, tech lead, you know, associate,

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you know, for a big consultancy firm.

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And from that, we started building a lot of systems and software, and we got a little bit renowned for experience.

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And then the organization, which was owned by a company in Australia, decided that they are

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going to retrench this department.

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Theyre going to downsize us. They dont need software.

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Theyre more traditionally engineering consultancy.

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You know, maybe they just need to pivot into a new direction.

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So we came up with this idea of us really taking up that department and starting it as, you know, an incubated startup.

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Like, we'll take everybody, don't pay us a retrenchment package.

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But what you should do is give us three years worth of your contract. Right.

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And that way, you know, we could use, everybody could still keep on, you know, with the job function.

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But we are also getting this opportunity, you know, to be young entrepreneurs and kind of like

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get into the meat of things, as you say.

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And so from my perspective, we started this little software consultancy company, and we just grew. We tackled bigger projects.

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Our benefits were a lot better.

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The cost was easier to manage because you don't have to pay for this massive overhead of the firm.

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And I think we did something crazy, like 25 projects across the entire Africa.

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We did hundreds of projects around the entire world because we were so small and so fast, a

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different way of thinking about our business.

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And so at a very early age, I started building more and bigger and getting more profile, more

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renowned, so to speak, in bigger projects from this and started smaller businesses and associations with it.

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And so we ended up with this organization being something that we found to be very unique, doing

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a digital transformation of the old traditional systems, so to speak.

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And so I kind of got.

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I was a very young CTO at that stage, and I was voted, you know, South Africa's top, you know,

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100 ctos for two years running.

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You know, I was in that top hundred list, and that was great.

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It just was an amazing feeling.

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And so I started doing this thing where I branched out and built multiple startups. And then Covid came. Right.

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You know, now you're overextending yourself.

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You know, you feel great, you're invincible.

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And then with the pandemic, we started just, you know, having to scale down.

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And I remembered I lost something crazy, like 32 million overnight.

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It was just a massive amount for me as a young entrepreneur.

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And we walked out of there, and luckily we could get all of the employees five months of severance,

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and we could forewarn them.

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And we had a position where we could really manage it.

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But after that, you almost did it.

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I was so close, so happy with what we have, but it's just not enough.

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And so I decided from that perspective, I just need to find a way to curb my curiosity.

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I need to know if in a different market, in a different environment, would I be able to do it again?

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And so I was part of this international CTO community, the seven ctos.

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And I met someone over there that was transitioning to a post IPo unicorn.

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And so we had this conversation, and I said to him, his name was also called Matt, by the way.

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And so we were like, hey, Matt, do you think this could be a collaboration? He's like, absolutely.

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We need to check it out.

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And so I did, and I joined him on his mission here in Canada.

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And from this perspective, now I'm just chasing the dragon, so to speak.

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You know, I want to get onto the next challenge, and the next challenge, you know, and that's been my transition.

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It's been a fascinating one.

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Wow, it's quite a story. Quite a story here.

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And when you look like the key differences between the building the tech companies and South

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Africa building the digital product and approach of people building and engineering engineers

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building there, if you compare it to Canada, like, how is it different? What differences there are?

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Yeah, it's actually a massive difference.

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There's differences in the technology, the engineers and the leadership roles.

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And I think it really stems from not only the economical environment, but also the culture and

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the labor law, to be honest.

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So in South Africa, we've got a lot of frameworks like c, hash and.net, comma and Java, and

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they seem to dominate the market.

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Our talent acquisition leans more heavily on formal education.

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There is a growing trend towards informal learning, but there still seems to be a bigger barrier to entry.

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And so financial institutions traditionally hire the most engineers, you know, and financial

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systems tends to have more legacy, more mainframe, and they still shape a lot of those development processes.

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So leadership structures seem to be a little bit more formalized.

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The startup community is extremely small.

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It mostly relies on bootstrapping businesses.

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There's not a lot of funding that exists, and there's few people that actually make successful software as a service.

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You know, kind of like organizations in Canada.

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It's a completely different story.

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You know, the entrepreneurial market drives all of the software development.

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You know, access to funding and opportunities really accelerate growth a lot.

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You know, startup seems to differentiate on being first to market.

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You know, engineers, engineers are a lot more enticed by profit sharing, you know, entitles,

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you know, and the leadership structure really depends on the size of the business.

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You know, a small organization seems to rely on informal or flat structures.

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Large organizations seems to have more rigid approaches.

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And so I found that south african engineers spent time on complex systems and being a little

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bit more diligent where the canadian engineers are extremely fast, but they struggle with those

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intricacies of nuances of compiled code and more algorithmic design, you know, design thinking

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and, you know, those kind of elements.

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And both have their place and both completely excel.

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You know, it's just physically the economics that set them apart.

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Now, the fascinating part of this is really the labor market, because in South Africa it's really

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hard to fire an employee, you know, even for misconduct.

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You have to set up an environment where they get three warnings.

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You have to prove, you know, that you've provided them with everything that they need to correct,

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you know, you need to show that they had training, you know, to able to, you know, function in their job.

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And so as such, you spend more time on like acquiring.

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Who do you, who do you hire?

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You know, what does that person look like?

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What are they going to bring?

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Are they going to be the right fit from day one?

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Because you're walking a different, you know, your path with this individual, you know, and

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so the leadership tends to be a little bit more structured and the leaders tend to be generalist.

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You know, they can't just look at the people management side.

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They need to look at the business.

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They transition their role more than just managing the people side, but also the business unit,

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it's become kind of like a career path, a very formal career path.

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If you want to get into leadership, there's specific milestones that you want to hit.

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And actually, most organizations tend to give this leadership training as a benefit in the organization.

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They're very proud to advertise that as part of their growth and their growth strategies, you

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know, but, yeah, it's really fascinating.

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It's not just people management, it's this business units.

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And in Canada, it's a little bit different. Right.

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You know, we found that engineers seem to start very early on, you know, in people management roles.

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Engineering team leads or managers seems to require as little as five years of experience, you

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know, and, you know, the canadian context, shaped by these experiences and cultures and immigration

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policies, emphasizes people management over business management.

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And so it's very much this from a generalistic perspective, more specialization, so to speak.

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And I found that to be very.

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Interesting, really interesting approach and analysis that you gave.

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So it reminds me, like, when I look at, let's say, the company in Canada, right?

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You have the young guys, general is they don't have, like, a super technical background.

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Maybe they haven't solved, like, some algorithmic problems.

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So, I mean, like, they are not so. Not so deep here.

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So they are maybe more of integrators, right, of the solutions, or R and D, which is outside. Right.

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They outsource, maybe, but they have, like, different reasons for it because, like, I assume

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in South Africa, you outsource because you cannot find the people. Right?

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Yeah, that's. Yeah, that's definitely an interesting problem. Like, absolutely.

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That's why we do it. We.

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We outsource or buy off the shelf more than anything else because we need someone else, you

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know, to take care of the maintenance and the cost.

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You know, the cost when you're buying something is.

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Is known, you know, the variable cost of building it, you know, and being able to rely on it

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specifically for business, that's never done, you know, done any of this is really hard.

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There's too much variability associated with it.

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And so, yeah, there's definitely a different reliance on what an engineer means and why you

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would want to have one in your apartment.

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Recently when we talked, we tackled, really interesting topic, because now we are in, or like

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last year, it's like a huge recession in a big tech.

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So, like, a lot of people experience that. It's really tough.

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There is a lot of layoffs, and you have some experiences here.

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I mean, you were inside the organization during the big layoffs, and you were involved in that.

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So maybe could you tell about the experience and what you learned from that?

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Yeah, that was a hard week for all of us.

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You know, it was a big, you know, layoff or workforce reduction.

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And one thing that I really want to just, you know, make sure that everybody understands is

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that it's extremely, you know, personal.

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You know, regardless of the position that you have within the organization, you know, from the

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economic standpoint, the burden really falls on the C suite, on the executives, you know, to

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kind of like put aside a lot of their emotions.

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And I can tell you that it's not easy.

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Everybody is people, you struggle with doing it, but you have to find a way to navigate this.

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Uncertainties and the weight of those decisions do tend to linger for a while.

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But our story was we went into a hypergrowth phase.

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We really realized that during the COVID pandemic time, our business absolutely searched.

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And then post pandemic we realized that our customer acquisition wasn't really keeping up with

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the pace with our projections.

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So finally we were starting to head into the red and we knew we had a signal saying that in

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a couple of months we're going to be in trouble.

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And so the senior management was read in.

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It almost felt like a secret ceremony.

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We were read in, we were gave the financials, we were given the numbers, and then we were told

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we need to find viability here and we need to embark on this cost cutting mission.

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We've got a couple of months left.

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We really left no stone unturned.

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Every cost, every subscription, even our monolithic structure.

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At the time, everything was scrutinized.

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We considered splitting our services into kind of like microservices to reduce spending. Unnecessary features were axed.

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Everyone was focused on customer acquiring projects rather than these traditional R and D things.

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And despite our efforts it became clear that our survival required either one or two things.

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Either we need to price ourselves out of market, but raising the cost, or we need to cut on our personnel.

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And so the truth is when you look at the data and you realize that there's only a handful of

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customers that's using your product, it's really difficult to justify a team of 4500 engineers

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to kind of build it.

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It just doesn't make a lot of sense.

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So we started to misread Covid signal of hypergrowth and we didn't plan for the post, you know, pandemic downturn.

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We were in this hype. The success blinded us.

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We failed to challenge our next strategic move.

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And so navigating through these decisions were never easy.

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But it was really essential for organization.

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And I remember the experience.

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It really did come to a shock as the employee.

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And I think that's where we failed.

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And it's never a good thing when, you know, kind of like these conversations, these hard conversations are shocks, right?

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We spent weeks turning over all the stones, making the fast decisions, but we never gave the employees a heads up.

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And it's such a difficult topic to navigate because you have an obligation to shareholders,

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and so you don't want information to get out there that might affect the shareholders in a negative way beforehand.

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We chose to keep it secret up until the last moment.

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And so nonetheless, it was a horrible experience.

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A couple of managers we kind of read in a week before, and the employees were kind of notified

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in a town hall setting where everybody comes together in one big meeting and there was really

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no time for them to allow them to kind of process the emotions or the news that they were getting in this town hall.

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If I would do it differently today, I would want to find a way to inform the employees a lot

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earlier, start looking at the signals a lot earlier.

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I think we took too long to start reacting to the news.

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You don't want to get caught off guard here.

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Once you see the signal, you want to inform people about those metrics and goals.

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Because I do believe when people collaborate, their curiosity and their creativity can come

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together and they can help know to solve some of these problems.

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I think we left them into the dog a little bit too long.

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What I really want to do, and something that's worked extremely well for us and something that

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I've learned from my time in South Africa is that as you kind of like, inch closer to that deadline,

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something that you could do, giving your employees a heads up is to kind of put together a voluntary retrenchment package.

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Say, like, hey, we five months out.

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If you sign up for this package right now, we're going to extend your benefits.

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You know, we're going to extend your pay with a couple of extra, you know, weeks or extra months.

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And you kind of get people to self select out, which is great because maybe those are not the

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people that you kind of want to keep, you know, you know, they might be in for the paycheck

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more than the culture itself, you know?

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And so you kind of get a lot of like, you know, some of those, you know, exits.

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And you also don't have people leaving the organization in a very negative way.

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You know, they're not angry.

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They're not going to LinkedIn and writing horrible things, you know, you need to find a way to do that.

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And then if you're still in the red, you know, after that event, now, that's kind of like where

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you can start looking at low performance, you know, across the board.

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And across the board means that you start, you know, where the paycheck hits the hardest, which means your executive suite.

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Do you need as many managers?

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Do you need as many, you know, directors?

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And it's really those kind of like, decisions that you would really benefit you a lot more than

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axing your workforce because that's potential lost, right.

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You can't remake that potential.

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After you've got it, you are going to slow down significantly.

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And so starting from the top down is also a great approach towards making sure that you hit your targets.

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But stuff that I think we did really great and that we really wanted to keep on.

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And if I do it again, I would really keep on in some of these things.

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Is creating an alumni site for your old employees to make sure that if your position changes,

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I'm going to reach out to you.

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I want you to know that there's a position if you want to apply for it.

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You don't have to redo culture.

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You can just come in and interview for the position itself.

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So we make that transition a lot easier.

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You also need to kind of like, think about your pr campaign.

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What message are you going to send out there?

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Because you've got shareholders, you've got stakeholders, you've got all of these different

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people that are invested in this story.

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So you really make sure that you want to land that plane. That's really important.

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And so you need to make sure that your management team sets up your individuals with references, LinkedIn recommendations.

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Your job as a director or senior management here is to ensure that your employees feel supported during this transition.

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It is going to be hard for them.

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Extend your healthcare benefits with a couple of extra weeks.

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Make sure that you inform the employees that's on vacation and parental leave.

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You don't want someone that's just had a baby and they come back and they're like, I don't have

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a job anymore and I don't know what's going on.

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You want to make sure that you keep those conversations going. Ultimately, it's really simple.

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When new people, when you survive this and in a couple of months or maybe a year when you are

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growing again, you want future employees to look at this situation and say, wow, this company

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did an amazing job here.

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I feel safe in knowing that they did the right thing.

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And I do want to keep on working here, you know, you don't want your, you know, your glassdoor

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rating to go from five, you know, to two because you mishandled, you know, this situation.

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And so, yeah, I would definitely, I've learned a couple of things from this for sure.

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Thank you for that. They're really insightful and I think actionable tips.

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I hope that nobody will need to use it, but still. Yeah, thanks for that.

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No, it's a pleasure. It's a pleasure.

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And recently during our talk, we were talking about that we are already a bit older.

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I mean, generational change is coming, right?

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We have the engineers with Gen Z.

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They have completely different approach, completely different priorities.

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And this is challenging for the leaders to deal with the engineers, their career expectations,

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their challenges that they're having.

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And I'm wondering, what do you find the most challenging in leading those young engineers?

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Yeah, I get the privilege of doing a lot of one on ones, and I think over my career, I've probably done thousands of them.

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For me, a one on one and kind of like a coaching session is deeply personal.

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I get to spend time with an individual.

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And I remember when I was a young engineer and, you know, you know, you old when you start.

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When I was young, you know, that's how, you know, you're very old.

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You know, your story start like that.

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And I remember, you know, from, from my perspective, you know, when I was doing coaching, it

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was an absolute privilege, you know, getting time with senior, you know, trying to learn from them.

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You know, I, you know, the time was very valuable.

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You know, there was this thing, you know, associated with it.

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And so I had to always show up, you know, prepared.

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What I find, you know, most of young engineers, you know, today when I do one on ones is that they're not prepared.

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They don't really take responsibility for the growth.

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They kind of seem to wait for instruction a little bit before they jump.

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You know, they don't jump in and try and swim.

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They don't come to you with problems.

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You know, everything is always fine.

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When you ask them about their code, they shy and they don't really want to show it to you as

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much or they think you and manager.

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And so what would, you know, in any case about these technical things?

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And so they kind of feel a little bit lost, right.

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It feels like it's a checklist for them.

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They just want the feedback, check it off.

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Then they're going to go into the big boss battle.

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They're going to win and they're going to walk out with a promotion.

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You know, that's kind of like what they require from me.

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You know, I've even seen, you know, young engineers a year after we've given them promotions,

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still doing the same job function, you know, of the previous role, you know, intermediate, still

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acting, you know, the way that junior should, you know, or working on the same kind of, like, level of complexity.

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And so I don't think they are stretching as much. They're not challenging themselves.

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They're not showing up with this thing about, like, what's the delta between me and the next

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level and what do I need to do?

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What I would want from these one on ones is these engineers coming to me and saying, like, ed,

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I think I suck at these elements.

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I don't know what to do about it or I don't have the tools to deal with it.

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Could you coach me the tools?

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You know, that's a way more valuable information than me trying to find a way to tell this person,

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like, hey, have you looked at your recent kind of, like, contributions?

24:07 - 24:12
And do you find that to be as valuable as someone potentially in the next position?

24:12 - 24:17
Because doing that kind of like, self awareness, that self check is really hard for them, you

24:17 - 24:22
know, it's not something that they grow up, you know, with as much as maybe we did.

24:23 - 24:30
And so I think really, as our, as we are leaders, you know, we need to guide this next generation.

24:30 - 24:35
We need to make sure that we do this in a safe space where we can push them, you know, safely

24:35 - 24:40
in a manner, you know, for them to kind of, like, get into these, you know, reflective states,

24:40 - 24:45
into these coaching, you know, ready environments, you know, for them to be hungry, you know,

24:45 - 24:49
to grab onto feedback, for them to be able to action it in such a way where they, you know,

24:49 - 24:53
they could see the benefit and, you know, and you can interact with it.

24:53 - 24:58
And I, and I really think, like, you know, there might be, you know, four or five things that

24:58 - 24:59
they could really do that would be great.

24:59 - 25:03
You know, they could, we could encourage them to be lifelong learners.

25:03 - 25:05
You know, that we could drive a lot more of their curiosity.

25:05 - 25:08
You know, it's not just about your job function.

25:08 - 25:09
What did you do outside of this?

25:09 - 25:10
What does it look like?

25:11 - 25:12
Why did you choose to do it?

25:12 - 25:13
Why are you excited about it?

25:13 - 25:18
You know, drive that and encourage that, you know, kind of like behavior that's going to be really important.

25:19 - 25:24
Self reflection and goal setting for them is going to be vital, you know, for them to sit down

25:24 - 25:26
and say, like, how did I perform today?

25:26 - 25:28
You know, was this good? Was it bad?

25:28 - 25:33
Do I know what good looks like? Do I know? What badly? What's my goal? Where am I going?

25:34 - 25:39
You know, for them to being able to do that delta, you know, and to drive it, that means that

25:39 - 25:45
their growth is now coming from themselves and not from you pushing as an external manager saying,

25:45 - 25:47
yes, a checklist of things to complete.

25:47 - 25:49
It's now a self driven thing.

25:49 - 25:53
And from a lifelong learner perspective, they're really going to accelerate.

25:54 - 26:00
They're really going to be great if they keep on with that potential.

26:00 - 26:08
The one thing that I found the most difficult to teach them is to embrace the discomfort and to stretch. Right.

26:08 - 26:14
You know, you grow when you go into the unknown, you know, you don't grow when everything is,

26:14 - 26:17
you know it very well, you know, and you can do this with your eyes closed, you know, and you

26:17 - 26:20
don't even have to look at the keyboard, you know, that's not growth.

26:20 - 26:22
That just seems like something you're really good at.

26:23 - 26:28
And so pushing them into embracing the discomfort, you know, is, is really interesting because

26:28 - 26:34
they do have a lot a big sense of imposter syndrome, you know, and you have to, you know, give

26:34 - 26:38
them the tools to kind of like, push them through that environment, you know, and I found that

26:38 - 26:40
to be an extremely difficult thing.

26:40 - 26:43
You know, they need to find feedback and mentors.

26:43 - 26:45
That doesn't mean that they just rely on the one on ones.

26:46 - 26:51
They need to go see, like, hey, that person that's a senior developer, that person that's a principal.

26:51 - 26:53
Oh, my, you know, I idolize that person.

26:53 - 26:58
You know, I think that the way that they approach their work function is wonderful because if

26:58 - 27:02
they have that examples, they know, you know, they could start to calculate, you know, that

27:02 - 27:05
distance between them, you know, and that environment.

27:05 - 27:09
And that's something that they really need to get comfortable in is walk up, meet someone new

27:10 - 27:15
in your organization, shake their hands and ask them, could I buy you a coffee, you know, or

27:15 - 27:18
set up a meeting, you know, a virtual wine.

27:18 - 27:21
And could we just talk a little bit about, you know, our craft?

27:21 - 27:25
The more we talk about it, the better we'll get, you know, the better understandings with the

27:25 - 27:30
more perspectives we allow in, the bigger our diversity and creativity gets.

27:30 - 27:34
And that's something that I really need to get comfortable with.

27:34 - 27:42
And I think lastly, effective communication, empathy and conflict resolution is probably the

27:42 - 27:45
number one thing on the list here.

27:46 - 27:53
They need to really feel comfortable having those conversations, know, understand the viewpoints

27:53 - 27:57
of different cultures, you know, different people with different backgrounds.

27:57 - 28:03
Some people come from university, some people, you know, come from, you know, a bootcamp you

28:03 - 28:05
know, everybody doesn't understand you.

28:05 - 28:10
You need to find ways to communicate with them, but also look at, you know, what they are bringing

28:10 - 28:15
to the party, you know, and how you can interact with them, you know, and then find those ways

28:15 - 28:21
where you could really be confident, you know, in saying, like, I believe that this is the best

28:21 - 28:27
way without it generating conflict, you know, in a way where you can have that radical candor,

28:27 - 28:33
you know, without punching down, is vitally important, and it's something that is missing, you know, from.

28:34 - 28:39
From the growth that I think, you know, we could really, as leaders, like, get them comfortable

28:39 - 28:41
with, you know, get them to explore some of these skills.

28:41 - 28:43
I think those are the five things that I.

28:43 - 28:51
I've seen happen a lot that we could really help build up in these new and future leaders.

28:53 - 29:01
Does the reflection thing remind me one case from my personal life, and I'm just wondering,

29:02 - 29:04
why does it work at work?

29:04 - 29:07
So I started to learn tennis one year ago, right?

29:07 - 29:12
And I have a coach for the tennis and hitting the ball with the forehand, right.

29:12 - 29:13
And the guy stopped me and said.

29:13 - 29:17
And he's saying, like, hey, what do you think was good?

29:17 - 29:19
What do you think was bad? What you could improve?

29:19 - 29:20
Right, right.

29:20 - 29:25
He's giving me some advices before, but he's not telling me, like, what I exactly should do, right.

29:26 - 29:27
But what I feel, what I think.

29:27 - 29:33
And this is, like, so powerful because you focus on correcting your own mistakes 100%.

29:33 - 29:39
And I'm just wondering how you could transpose it and how you can do it the same at work, because

29:39 - 29:42
in the sport, you see it, like, really clearly and easily.

29:42 - 29:46
But as a work, as an engineer, I have a feeling that this is not so tangible.

29:46 - 29:52
No, it's not. What I found works is, you know, making sure you ask powerful questions, you know,

29:52 - 29:57
not leading questions, but powerful questions, you know, why do you think this was great?

29:57 - 30:01
What do you think about this behavior, you know, is extraordinary.

30:01 - 30:05
Do you think that this is just part of your job function and what you're supposed to be doing,

30:05 - 30:09
or have you really acquired new skill?

30:09 - 30:15
Why do you think what you choose that kind of questions, needing them to explain themselves

30:16 - 30:20
and find the questions that they need to ask for that self reflection?

30:21 - 30:28
I found one technique that's really interesting, and it was one that we used in South Africa,

30:28 - 30:34
and we modified a little bit because I think it was in very.

30:34 - 30:38
In many ways, it was a very cruel way to do the self reflection.

30:38 - 30:46
But we used to ask this question, you know, how much time did you spend building x? Right.

30:46 - 30:49
And a person would say, like 100 hours, right?

30:49 - 30:54
And you would ask them, have you considered the cost of, you know, what you are building?

30:55 - 31:00
Have you considered, you know, let's say you get paid $100 an hour, you know, and you spend

31:00 - 31:05
100 hours, you know, have you considered that someone would need to pay for this feature, you

31:05 - 31:10
know, for us to get a return on investment year, you know, we would need to accumulate, you

31:10 - 31:19
know, a set amount of dollars and then ask the question, you know, would you pay for it if you were the customer? Right.

31:20 - 31:24
And it's very interesting how that, you know, the answer is like, no, I wouldn't pay for this.

31:24 - 31:28
And we're like, okay, well, why did we build it then?

31:28 - 31:31
You know, like, why are we, you know, going through this exercise?

31:31 - 31:38
And so something that I found it's very powerful with the younger engineers is telling them

31:38 - 31:41
to add a value to this session.

31:42 - 31:48
Be willing to put $100 down for this one on one for this coaching session.

31:50 - 31:52
And do you now show up prepared?

31:52 - 31:54
Because if you don't, I'm going to take you $100.

31:56 - 32:00
Does it change the way you think about the feedback and what I'm telling you, just because you

32:00 - 32:05
pay for it, and it's very interesting that it does. It does.

32:05 - 32:10
It suddenly becomes more real because it's not just a meeting that I have every two weeks with

32:10 - 32:16
my manager, but it's now a session that's supposed to drive a lot of my growth and having people

32:16 - 32:22
understand there is a cost associated with it this time. There's value, there's input.

32:22 - 32:28
And if you find what matters to you, if you could create that association, the self reflection

32:28 - 32:30
seems to be a little bit faster.

32:32 - 32:36
I think that's great. I love the example that you mentioned.

32:36 - 32:37
I don't think it's cruel.

32:37 - 32:42
I think it's great because it involves people in the business aspect.

32:43 - 32:45
Like, we are building the things to make the business.

32:46 - 32:50
So you need to take care of costs of what you are building.

32:52 - 32:55
This is. This is a good approach, I think.

32:57 - 33:02
Yes, I hope so. It's been working for me, you know, so far, and it's all about powerful questions.

33:03 - 33:07
And I think that is, you know, you need to spark some of that reflection, you know?

33:07 - 33:13
And, you know, sometimes, you know, when you are cruel, it is so that you can be kind. You know, it's.

33:13 - 33:16
It's not with intent, you know, to make. To downgrade people.

33:16 - 33:18
And I think, like, that's the caveat.

33:18 - 33:23
The thing that you just need to be careful of here is that you are not saying that the person

33:23 - 33:30
is bad, although you're saying that, hey, the work might not be of quality, and we need to create

33:30 - 33:34
that distance between the individual and the work.

33:34 - 33:40
So if you could put it in a way where you really extract those two concepts from one another,

33:41 - 33:44
you'll definitely find that it's successful.

33:46 - 33:51
You work in one of the biggest Nio banks in America.

33:51 - 33:59
And recently when we talked, you mentioned the structure of the company and the structure of the team stuff. This is not.

33:59 - 34:04
I got typical approach, and I'm wondering if you could elaborate on that.

34:04 - 34:13
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So we believe very heavily in ownership. We have a mission.

34:14 - 34:21
We don't want to change the way the Canadians interact with banking in 20 years.

34:21 - 34:23
We want to do it next year.

34:23 - 34:24
We want to do it today.

34:24 - 34:27
And so when you ask yourself that question, you're like, how do you do it?

34:28 - 34:29
You need to be able to go fast.

34:29 - 34:31
So you need a lot of autonomy.

34:31 - 34:33
You need a lot of decision making power.

34:34 - 34:41
You need a lot of get rid of the red type, get rid of the bullshit, so to speak.

34:41 - 34:46
And so the way you kind of do it is by over promoting ownership, really.

34:46 - 34:49
Like, that's the key value of our organization, is ownership.

34:49 - 35:00
And you could see it's being reflected heavily in the way that we talk about our stock options or compensation package.

35:00 - 35:03
We want people to get a big amount of equity.

35:03 - 35:07
It needs to matter to them, you know, from day one.

35:07 - 35:13
And so we built a structure where, you know, ownership is effectively your key to success.

35:14 - 35:22
And the title is kind of like, more just an indication of, like, where you spend your focus. Right?

35:23 - 35:25
So nothing is off limits in this organization.

35:25 - 35:32
You know, for example, you know, today, you know, as a director, you know, I've got a very specific

35:32 - 35:33
business unit that I look at.

35:33 - 35:34
You know, that's my title.

35:34 - 35:37
I'm a director of a very specific business unit. I.

35:37 - 35:43
But in the organization, I'm busy with compliance documentation.

35:43 - 35:47
I'm running security to a degree.

35:47 - 35:49
I'm helping and interacting with that.

35:49 - 35:55
I'm sitting with developers to help them solve problems in specific structures.

35:56 - 36:02
I'm also managing and reporting some strategic things up to my boss.

36:03 - 36:08
And so from that perspective, it's really about how much time do you have?

36:08 - 36:14
How much value can you add, and can you take ownership of this thing and drive it to completion?

36:14 - 36:23
So our structures are completely flat, and I found it to be extremely empowering. The traditional.

36:24 - 36:31
You need to have a CTO and a VP and directors and managers, and all of those elements seem to

36:31 - 36:36
fall away and to the wayside when you are like, we are building this and we need to get this done.

36:36 - 36:40
And if you show up, what responsibility are you going to take?

36:40 - 36:46
And so we really started building a culture where that's more important than anything else.

36:46 - 36:49
And the results has been remarkable, to be honest.

36:51 - 37:00
And regarding the 2024, your current role, I'm wondering what are the biggest challenges and

37:00 - 37:03
the pain points that you are having regarding engineering or product delivery?

37:03 - 37:07
Oh, yeah, fascinating question here. Great question. Yeah.

37:07 - 37:13
So I think like, you know, what we've learned is we are growing.

37:13 - 37:14
We are growing at a rapid pace.

37:14 - 37:19
Like I mentioned, we don't want to do this, you know, in a couple of years, we want to do this tomorrow.

37:19 - 37:25
And so we are moving, you know, more micro, we are building more microservices as a product

37:25 - 37:27
becomes more and more popular.

37:28 - 37:36
Now, if you remember, a lot of the traditional teaching will tell you, oh, you need two people per microservice.

37:36 - 37:39
It needs to be small, but two people will microservice.

37:39 - 37:43
Well, if you have a thousand microservices, that means you need 2000 people.

37:43 - 37:48
That doesn't sound like a feasible solution for this answer at all.

37:48 - 37:55
And so we can't rely on rapid expansion to kind of get the job done. I've learned that lesson.

37:55 - 38:01
You don't want to get into hyper growth because you get a market signal and then only to be

38:01 - 38:05
hit by layoffs or problems down the line.

38:05 - 38:10
And so what we need to do is we really need to focus on talent density.

38:10 - 38:14
How do we build and extract the most of our employees?

38:14 - 38:20
How do we get a, you know, someone, you know, out of university, you know, but really make them

38:20 - 38:26
an exceptional engineer, you know, in three years, you know, because we don't have the traditional

38:26 - 38:32
eight year journey or ten year journey, you know, that most people, you know, have the benefit of.

38:33 - 38:39
And so I think we need to rethink a lot of our frameworks, our policies, you know, you know,

38:39 - 38:41
could we reduce cognitive load?

38:43 - 38:46
Could we introduce standard operating procedures?

38:46 - 38:50
Do we know where we're spending 80% of our time in?

38:51 - 38:55
Do our services follow common patterns? That's easy, that's repeatable.

38:57 - 39:01
Are they all contained business logic that's easily changeable?

39:01 - 39:05
These are the type of questions and the problems that we are going to deal with at scale.

39:06 - 39:12
We need to really ensure a very smooth process that minimizes the risk of outages, tech debt

39:12 - 39:15
and production incident, because that just takes away from your time to develop.

39:16 - 39:22
And so we need to find a way to go fast without adding as much risk into the system.

39:23 - 39:25
And I think it's really going to be an interesting year.

39:28 - 39:36
I'm just wondering, all of us, we have some kind of strengths, and I kind of, like, feel what are your strengths?

39:36 - 39:39
But maybe you could tell me more about it.

39:39 - 39:41
Like, to what do you attribute your success?

39:41 - 39:44
Why do you think you are in the place where you are today?

39:44 - 39:46
Oh, that's a great question.

39:47 - 39:49
I have to tell you this story.

39:50 - 39:55
My dad, in the early nineties, he got an old Commodore 64, very old.

39:55 - 40:03
For those that are very new to this podcast, that's a computer that I had, I think, two megabytes of RAm.

40:03 - 40:05
It was really ridiculously small.

40:06 - 40:10
And he asked someone to install some games on advice.

40:11 - 40:18
And back then, the games, they were all on this menu. Press one for games.

40:18 - 40:20
Press two for your word functionality.

40:21 - 40:23
It was a very old DoS system.

40:23 - 40:29
And I remember I was six years old at the time, and this machine was absolutely fascinating,

40:29 - 40:35
but it came with, like, this rule, you know, like, you could spend time on it supervised, but

40:35 - 40:37
if you ever break this computer, that would be the end of you.

40:38 - 40:44
Like, you're done, you know, having something like this in our house was just absolutely amazing.

40:45 - 40:48
And so what did we do? We broke it, right.

40:48 - 40:52
You know, well, kind of, you know, we did it by accident.

40:52 - 40:57
We pressed one of the menu buttons, you know, and I think I pressed number nine, and number

40:57 - 41:02
nine was exit to DOS, you know, and the only thing that sits on this little computer is this

41:02 - 41:07
thing that says doS, you know, DOS 3.1, I believe, you know, at that stage.

41:07 - 41:15
And I had no idea, no matter what I did, resetting the computer, turning it on and off again,

41:15 - 41:18
you know, it just went back to this kind of, like, DOS stream.

41:18 - 41:20
And so I remember the sheer panic.

41:20 - 41:23
Like, I know, I was thinking, oh, this is the day I'm gonna die.

41:24 - 41:25
You know, this is where it is.

41:25 - 41:31
So I asked my mom to take me to the only source of knowledge that existed back then, which was

41:31 - 41:34
the library, you know, and I rewalk.

41:35 - 41:37
I remember walking in and asking my mom, could you.

41:37 - 41:39
Could you just stand somewhere else?

41:39 - 41:42
I need to go find some books, you know, please don't grab my style.

41:42 - 41:46
You know, my mom just smiled and, you know, she went off.

41:46 - 41:51
And so I secretly went to the librarian and I asked her, you know, do you have any books about dos?

41:52 - 41:55
And she took me to this computer section, and I'm like, which one?

41:55 - 41:56
Which ones are the best ones?

41:56 - 42:01
You know, and she looks at me, she's like, normally these are reserved for, like, college and

42:01 - 42:05
university graduates, you know, what do you want to do with it?

42:05 - 42:09
And I'm like, no matter how many can I take home, you know? And she's like, six.

42:09 - 42:14
I'm like, I'll take six, you know, and I just grabbed a couple of these books, and I got back

42:14 - 42:17
home, and I couldn't understand any of it, right?

42:17 - 42:22
But what I did realize, one book, I think it was like the third one, you know, one book had

42:22 - 42:29
words that were bold, you know, was like, had, like, some bold lettering on it.

42:29 - 42:34
And I remember if I typed the bold word into the computer, something happens, you know, and

42:34 - 42:35
I was like, oh, oh.

42:35 - 42:39
You know, I got back into this menu system, and now I was on top of the world.

42:40 - 42:43
I could get out of it, and I could get back into it.

42:43 - 42:45
So I'm not breaking it.

42:45 - 42:47
What else can I do with this computer?

42:47 - 42:56
And I remembered I got information about how to access batch scripts and write my own little

42:56 - 42:59
programs of things that I could do.

43:00 - 43:03
And I started writing my first computer program when I was six years old.

43:03 - 43:10
I got into qbasic, and I remember I wrote an address book, and if you type in my friend's name,

43:10 - 43:14
it will tell you his telephone number, because we didn't have cell phones back then.

43:14 - 43:17
Telephone number and his address, right.

43:17 - 43:24
And so a lot of that journey has been, you know, what made me who I am today.

43:24 - 43:27
The same thing happened at university.

43:27 - 43:31
I knew I wanted to go into computers and software development.

43:32 - 43:39
And so at my second year of university, my dad moved, you know, my mom and dad moved to a province,

43:39 - 43:46
and my sister, you know, she had, you know, she had, like, a university grant, and, you know,

43:46 - 43:53
from this grant, she was going to study, and so she's going to lose this grand if they move.

43:53 - 43:59
And so I decided, like, hey, I can stop working right now, you know, and I can get into the

43:59 - 44:02
market, and she can just use the money that we would use for my education.

44:02 - 44:04
You know, that's, that's a great thing that we could do.

44:05 - 44:11
And so I joined the workforce a little bit earlier than expected, and I finished my education in 2015.

44:11 - 44:20
I finished my master's degree in 2015 with a specialization in software development because

44:20 - 44:27
of, like, I wanted to complete it, but I also wanted to not stop someone else from having this opportunity.

44:27 - 44:33
I felt I had enough to make kind of, like, a lot of this work.

44:33 - 44:39
And so I think my passion and tenacity has been the biggest driver throughout my career.

44:40 - 44:41
I faced so many challenges.

44:42 - 44:43
They were big and small.

44:43 - 44:46
A lot of them was, today I'm going to die challenges.

44:47 - 44:50
But I always found myself working through the problem.

44:51 - 44:54
Maybe I'm a little bit stubborn I don't know.

44:55 - 45:01
I don't want to accept my fate, but I found with just a lot of hard work and determination you

45:01 - 45:04
could overcome almost all obstacles.

45:04 - 45:14
You know, my dad used to tell me when we remove ourselves from the equation, in those moments we are remembered.

45:15 - 45:17
And I think a lot of that has been stuck ing with me.

45:17 - 45:23
You know, don't do things because it will win you prestige, you know, or some sort of award,

45:23 - 45:26
you know, do them because they matter.

45:26 - 45:27
You know, put in the work.

45:28 - 45:30
And that's what I've been doing.

45:30 - 45:31
I've been putting in the work.

45:32 - 45:37
Fascinating story, as my must say. Like really fascinating. Like,

45:40 - 45:45
I think, like now, today for young people, it's really hard to focus because there is so much

45:45 - 45:52
the focus and like, I mean, ten years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, maybe it was different,

45:52 - 45:59
but you can focus on one thing and go all in and now there is.

45:59 - 46:02
So this is a good and bad thing, right?

46:02 - 46:05
At the same time, you can be whoever you want.

46:05 - 46:10
You have the best lessons online from the best possible professors.

46:10 - 46:18
But there are so much tempting to jump from one thing to another and to go like, ole and ask you that.

46:18 - 46:21
That's so true. That's really true. Yeah.

46:21 - 46:26
I found that, you know, the younger generation, they do get distracted a lot. Right.

46:26 - 46:31
I remembered there was one book about design patterns, you know, and that was the only book,

46:31 - 46:33
you know, that you had to read.

46:33 - 46:37
And it was in c, in c, you know, it was, it was really.

46:37 - 46:39
But you had to understand that.

46:39 - 46:44
And so your prerequisite in getting this knowledge was, know, getting into, you know, this very,

46:45 - 46:47
you know, old compiled, you know, language.

46:47 - 46:54
And so you start to build, you know, your knowledge over time. It wasn't instant gratification.

46:54 - 46:56
You can't just google it and find the answer.

46:56 - 46:59
You know, you had to really go through the journey.

47:00 - 47:07
I found from a lot of, like, my setbacks, a lot of, you know, times where I wasn't the smartest

47:07 - 47:15
person in the room, you know, where I failed effectively at a task is when I went back and I

47:15 - 47:17
said, like, how did I, what am I missing?

47:17 - 47:19
What knowledge don't I have?

47:19 - 47:24
And I spent a lot of time, like, starting to accumulate those, you know, blind spots, you know,

47:24 - 47:26
and working on those blind spots.

47:26 - 47:31
And it's just been a fascinating journey where I'm still, I'm still learning today, you know,

47:32 - 47:35
about all of these things because I'm putting in the work. Yeah.

47:36 - 47:40
And the last question that I have, it's about your.

47:40 - 47:45
That the books or the resources congress is something that have been really influential on yourself.

47:46 - 47:50
Despite, of course, this book about dos that you took from the library, right?

47:51 - 48:02
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm actually, you know, very much inclined to be a classical learner. You know, I don't.

48:02 - 48:09
I think the, you know, the modern books are great, but in a way, they just really rehashing,

48:09 - 48:14
you know, a lot of information that's been available for us, you know, you know, throughout generations.

48:14 - 48:18
I must say, the one that I found the most interesting and the most valuable, specifically being

48:18 - 48:22
an entrepreneur, is the art of war by Sun Tzu.

48:22 - 48:26
You know, I don't know if you've ever read, you know, that I have one. Yeah.

48:26 - 48:31
The book of five Rings, you know, is also brilliant, but, you know, the art of War, for me has

48:31 - 48:35
been something that has been absolutely fascinating.

48:35 - 48:42
You know, I think my biggest challenge, you know, in growing as an individual is my compassion

48:42 - 48:47
and caring was really something that stifled a lot of my business growth.

48:47 - 48:52
You know, I had a bunch of business partners that got me into trouble, you know, situations

48:52 - 49:01
I trusted a lot, you know, into employees or, you know, even people, you know, peers that I

49:01 - 49:05
worked with, you know, I trusted, you know, them too fast.

49:05 - 49:07
I didn't verify a lot of the information.

49:07 - 49:13
And I think what I've learned, you know, from, you know, the art of war was really about like,

49:13 - 49:19
whoa, you know, there's different approaches, you know, and just because people are nice doesn't

49:19 - 49:23
mean, you know, you should entrust them with all of your information or with everything that

49:23 - 49:25
you are doing, you know, and putting it together.

49:26 - 49:31
And so I found a lot of, like, positioning yourself from a strategic perspective, specifically

49:31 - 49:36
when you play a role in the boardroom, has been an absolutely fascinating journey, you know,

49:37 - 49:39
and so that's been a great one. I love that book.

49:39 - 49:41
I also really enjoy your podcast.

49:41 - 49:46
You know, I've been a listener from way before we, you know, got together, you know, and, like,

49:46 - 49:53
I, like you mentioned, you know, I love the fact that you get into the meat of it, you know, no bullshit.

49:53 - 49:59
And what's wonderful about your podcast is really this ability for you to bring in so many diverse

49:59 - 50:05
opinions and thinking into the room where we can have a conversation about it.

50:05 - 50:06
And I learn a lot from.

50:06 - 50:13
I learn a lot from different people's way of thinking and the way that they've been doing their

50:13 - 50:15
solutions and they've been putting up their experience.

50:16 - 50:20
And so that's been, you know, absolutely a wonderful, you know, journey for me.

50:20 - 50:26
There's some few others like, you know, Etienne de Brain, as he's part of the seven CTO community.

50:26 - 50:33
He does a lot of, like, great, wonderful, you know, work with ctos and kind of getting them together in a room.

50:34 - 50:39
You know, he has a podcast as well, you know, where he speaks a little bit about, like, you

50:39 - 50:42
know, what's the market trends and what's going on there.

50:42 - 50:44
I found that to be extremely helpful.

50:44 - 50:49
Also, if you are a young CTO, he has a program that's called the CTO levels.

50:49 - 50:52
That's just absolutely fantastic for you to understand.

50:52 - 50:54
What level am I operating at?

50:54 - 50:56
What's the next challenges that I need to face?

50:56 - 51:01
It provides a growth framework for yourself. That's just a wonderful.

51:01 - 51:06
If you're a young leader and you feel lost, because that's what you do, you feel lost.

51:06 - 51:09
A lot of hard on top.

51:09 - 51:14
You know, you don't have a lot of, like, meaningful content, you know, to guide you.

51:14 - 51:18
You know, finding resources like that has been extremely helpful.

51:18 - 51:21
Lately, I've been reading a book called the five Strategic.

51:21 - 51:23
Your next five strategic moves.

51:23 - 51:25
I don't know if you've ever read that one.

51:25 - 51:26
No.

51:27 - 51:32
Yeah. Absolutely brilliant book. You know, it's really about.

51:33 - 51:37
It's done by Patrick Bear David.

51:37 - 51:41
And it's really about mastering the art of business strategy.

51:42 - 51:46
Wonderful, wonderful composition put together.

51:46 - 51:50
But it's really about that drive and tenacity and making sure that you're not just thinking

51:51 - 51:54
about the position you are in now, but thinking those five moves ahead.

51:54 - 51:57
I found that to be an extremely helpful book.

51:57 - 52:01
The hard thing about hard things is, really great book.

52:01 - 52:06
You know, I think it's been referenced a couple of times on this podcast as well, you know, so, um.

52:07 - 52:14
Yeah, there's just so much content out there, you know. Um, I hope that.

52:14 - 52:18
Thanks very much, Ed. It's a lot. It's a lot. Yeah. I mean, like, the.

52:18 - 52:21
The whole conversation, I really appreciate it.

52:21 - 52:24
I think it's, like, really packed with meat.

52:24 - 52:26
Like a really meaty outspear. So the.

52:26 - 52:32
This is always that I'm looking for during the conversation, and I think this one, it's really

52:32 - 52:35
packed in the knowledge, like, really actionable knowledge.

52:35 - 52:36
So thank you for that today.

52:36 - 52:41
Yeah, no, absolutely. I'm happy to help, and let's do this again sometime. It would be great.

52:42 - 52:51
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